As Frank notes, this is not really surprising if you have seen the recent-ish papers on sorting. It is indeed frustrating when a paper seems to have nice ideas

As Frank notes, this is not really surprising if you have seen the recent-ish papers on sorting. It is indeed frustrating when a paper seems to have nice ideas but does not do a good enough job at the simple baselines; and in most cases, there is no way for you to easily check your intuitions :(